Logic and linear algebra: an introduction

Abstract

We give an introduction to logic tailored for algebraists, explaining how proofs in linear logic can be viewed as algorithms for constructing morphisms in symmetric closed monoidal categories with additional structure. This is made explicit by showing how to represent proofs in linear logic as linear maps between vector spaces. The interesting part of this vector space semantics is based on the cofree cocommutative coalgebra of Sweedler.